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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of different levels of place understanding (primarily typo-morphological analysis) on the nature of interventions within historic urban setting and buildings within the City of Amman.

The research methodology depended on an extensive thematic survey and analysis. The typo-morphological analysis addressed several of Amman's residential hills and their connections with the downtown area. The thematic place survey tool included different units of analysis (e.g. buildings, public spaces, streets and sloped lands between streets) and addressed the values of these various buildings and spaces, their typology, typo-morphology and relation to the urban context, nature of change and transformations over time to mention a few. The extensive survey also included semi-structured interviews about these buildings addressing their emergence, historic context and values.

The paper presents an architectural typology for Amman's architecture and its relationship with the city's morphology stressing the specificity of Amman's historic core and residential hills. The paper also discusses the effect of this level of place understanding on the nature and levels of interventions within historic settings and buildings.

This level of place understanding (typo-morphological analysis) can have a positive impact on the practice of architectural and urban conservation by informing the nature of interventions within historic urban setting and buildings within the city. More specifically, this level of place understanding can, first, inform the development of urban and heritage guidelines within conservation areas in one of Amman's residential neighborhoods (Weibdeh) and, second, inform the nature of interventions to existing historic buildings based on respect of building typology.

This paper contributes to the disciplines of architectural and urban conservation illustrating how place understanding can inform practices of heritage conservation and future policies and strategies concerning new intervention within such heritage places.

With the increasing number of universities in the country, research on urban form and architecture—with a focus on historic settlements—has accelerated in Cyprus in the last fifteen years. Lefke, a small traditional medieval town located on north-west Cyprus, warrants a detailed urban morphological study, as its traditional urban pattern has been shaped by a medieval character. Within its overall organic urban pattern, there are well-scaled narrow streets, a number of public buildings and irregularly shaped public spaces at the intersection of streets and/or in front of public buildings. Lefke's morphological characteristics, which have developed throughout many years, have been significantly impacted by British influences, as the Cyprus Mines Corporation (CMC), established in 1916, turned Lefke into an industrial town. The CMC district, which is the first industrial mass housing district in Cyprus, has uniquely impacted Lefke's urban patterns and still defines the morphological characteristics of the town today. Accordingly, this paper first explores urban morphology based on two pioneering morphological studies: Gianfranco Cannigia's theories of typo-morphological understanding, and the evolutionary insights of M.R.G. Conzen. The ultimate goal is to set up a typo-morphological basis for the CMC industrial mass housing district, which will drive future interventions, design and planning policies towards its conservation and sustainability.

Relating development control regulations to urban morphology analysis concepts is essential to deal with incremental change in existing contexts, relating urban morphology analysis to intangible factors of change such as land economics, human needs, politics and ideologies, helps protecting character and value of contexts from unguided change controlled by waves of political decisions, change of densities and land values. The first part of the paper discusses different approaches to urban morphology analysis, the need to development control regulations to protect character and value, the incremental nature of urban change, and urban morphology's non physical aspects effect on urban change. The second part of the paper reviews two case studies in France and Egypt to assess development control regulations in each case, how it affected urban change and area character, and examines whether urban morphology analysis was part of Development control regulations or not. It concludes with the evaluation of the second case, and the development of a frame work linking non physical factors affecting incremental change with morphological studies, showing the need to relate development control regulations to morphological analysis of town's form and non physical variables affecting form change to guide positively incremental change.